Publisher cancels Mantle 'memoir'

NEW YORK, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- A New York publisher canceled publication of an ersatz memoir about Mickey Mantle that enraged his family and teammates.

Michael Morrison, president of HarperCollins' Harper/Morrow division, said he spoke with "7: The Mickey Mantle Novel" author Peter Golenbock and "we mutually agreed to part ways with this book," Morrison told the New York Daily News.

HarperCollins also announced that ReganBooks would be disbanded.

Golenbock said he was disappointed but confident another publisher would be found.

The cancellation came a month after HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman fired Judith Regan, who signed Golenbock's book for her ReganBooks imprint.

It also marks the second celebrity book from ReganBooks to be withdrawn in recent months. In November, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which owns HarperCollins and ReganBooks, shredded copies of O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It," a supposedly hypothetical account of his ex-wife's slaying.

The Mantle piece, which was due to go on sale in March, was described in the ReganBooks catalogue as an "imagined memoir" of the slugger that reveals the "hidden story" of his life in baseball.